"I read the news today (oh boy)" - Democratic Underground

H2O Man

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Mon Jan-24-11 02:52 PM
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"I read the news today (oh boy)"

“I believe in the profession of journalism. I believe that the public journal is a public trust; that all concerned with it are, to the full measure of responsibility, trustees for the public; that acceptance of lesser service than the public service is a betrayal of this trust; that individual responsibility may not be escaped by pleading another's instructions or another's dividends; that advertising, newsand editorial columns should alike serve the best interests of readers; that supreme test of good journalism is the measure of its public service.”
--Journalist's Creed

“We need to get him to stop.”
--Irvin “Scooter” Libby

One of the reasons the “Founding Fathers” created Amendment 1 in order to insure that the public had access to a “free press.” It is impossible, in any society larger than a small, communal group, to have true democracy without a press that is not controlled by the government. The dynamics in our nation have changed considerably since Amendment 1 was adopted in 1791; two of the most significant changes include the advent of the national media becoming a property of those corporations which exercise a dangerously undemocratic influence in government, and the role that television began to play in national politics in 1960.

It is within this context that members of the Democratic Underground are not only angry that Keith Olbermann's Countdown is no longer on MSNBC: we recognize that his “leaving” that corporate media's line-up is part and parcel of a dangerous trend in American politics.

Even before the Kennedy administration, US Presidents have attempted to use the media in a manner that promotes their image and policies. The flip side of that is when administrations attempt to keep information that is negative in terms of image and policy from the press. This flip side mutates into a tumor on democracy, when administrations do two things: {1} insert misinformation and disinformation into the media; and {2} target specific media sources, including individual journalists.

This diseased activity is not, of course, limited to the Executive Office. There are all types of people in positions of power in Washington, DC, who lack the moral capacity to tell the truth twice consecutively. And there are groups, frequently in the field of intelligence, that systematically use the media to control the public's perception of national and world events. Again,we can identify two ways this takes place: {1} when “retired” intelligence assets become “journalists”; and {2} when corporate interests provide fertile ground for their planting the seeds of deception.

It's easy to see how these influences became manifest in Nixon's “Enemies list,” which included journalists; in the media black-out on the most serious issues in the Iran-Contra scandals; and in the Bush/Cheney administration's promotion of the war in Iraq.

The “Scooter” Libby quote above comes from page 266 of “Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War,” by Michael Isikoff and David Corn (Crown Publishers; 2006). The Office of Vice President Dick Cheney took offense to the reporting being done by Chris Matthews on MSNBC. Libby called Tim Russert in an attempt to silence Matthews; Russert, in turn, reported this to Neal Shapiro, the president of NBC. Shapiro ordered Matthews to “throttle back a bit,” because, “Hey, this guy is still the vice president” (page 267).

This is a large part of what our forum members find offensive with MSNBC: when a Keith Olbermann refuses to be silenced, the corporate machine will attempt to marginalize them. Olbermann is not the first journalist to be targeted by corporate/political forces: two obvious examples of voices that were marginalized were Bill Moyers and Dan Rather. Another is David Shuster.

I tend to like a number of the journalists still on MSNBC's evening programs. However, I recognize that Chris Matthews and Larry O'Donnell are moderate democrats, and both have been closely associated with the machine politics in DC. Ed is a liberal who I'd enjoy talking to at a picnic, and Rachel is now the lone progressive voice on cable news.

Most of my extended family and friends, like myself, found Countdown to be the most valuable choice for meaningful televised journalism. The concern with what has happened is not somehow limited to our wanting to be entertained by a bright, shiny trinket – although Keith Olbermann could indeed be entertaining. It's that the machine can, to far too large an extent, marginalize those voices who they cannot silence. And that significantly reduces the options for the public to gain access to “different” ideas than the bland, lima bean news served by CNN, or the rancid byproducts cooked up by Fox.

Peace,
H2O Man